in these parts was more than overbalanced by the decrease in the South Atlantic and Gulf states and in the Mississippi Valley.  The smallest proportion of farm tenancy is found in New England (8%), and the largest in the southern states (45.9% in the South Atlantic states, and more than 50% in the South central states).  A large part of the farming in the South is done by negroes, most of whom are either laborers on the farms of the white population or tenants on small farms which they usually work on shares.  And yet the number of negro farm owners in the South has been rapidly increasing in the last few years, though not so rapidly as the number of tenants.  In 1910 negro farm owners cultivated nearly 16,000,000 acres of land in the South, all of which they have acquired since the Civil War.

EFFECTS OF DECLINE OF HOME OWNERSHIP

The decline in home ownership both in the cities and in the rural districts of the United States has been observed with considerable anxiety because of the effect upon our national welfare and upon the citizenship of the country.  One writer says: 

Farming is a permanent business; it is no “fly by night” occupation. ...  No man can pull up stakes and leave a farm at the close of the year without sacrificing the results of labor which he has done ...  The renter who ends harvest knowing that he will move in the spring, will not do as good a job of hauling manure and fall plowing as he would were he to stay; nor does he take as good care of the buildings and other improvements ...

The cost to the farming business of the country each year for this annual farm moving-week mounts into the millions of dollars.  And the pity of it all is that practically no one is the winner thereby ...  The renter loses, the landlord loses, the general community and the nation at large lose. [Footnote:  W.D.  Boyce, in an editorial in the farming business, February 26, 1916, quoted in Nourse, agricultural economics, p. 651.]

Tenant farming also places obstacles in the way of community progress in other ways.

The tenant takes little interest in community affairs.  The questions of schools, churches, or roads are of little moment to him.  He does not wish to invest in enterprises which will of necessity be left wholly ... to his successor.  In short, he is in the community, but hardly of it. [Footnote:  B.H.  Hibbard, “Farm Tenancy in the United States,” in Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, March, 1912, p. 39.]

A family that owns its home feels a sense of proprietorship in a part of the community land.  The money value of a home increases in proportion to the prosperity of the community as a whole; its owner will therefore be inclined to do all he can to promote the welfare of the community.  A community that is made up largely of homes owned by their occupants is likely to be more prosperous and more progressive, and its citizens more loyal to it, than a community whose families are tenants.